"The altos are great, everyone else is feeble."

That's more like it, isn't it? And it was of course *us* that Jamie was referring to this time :-)

Loads of stuff to write, which is why I didn't write it last night - I did stay up for quite a while when I got home, though, because I spent a couple of hours online doing all my Christmas shopping. None of this pushing my way through crowds in shops rubbish! All I have to do now is do some sums to work out how to compensate for the huge amount of money I spent last night...

Before I forget, a couple of non-carol-concert-related things... Graham E has found another review of The Music Makers, and Barbara sent me a copy of the page of jokes she was passing round yesterday. Thanks to both of you.

Anyway, the concerts. The overriding theme was of course silly headgear, as always. The silliest hat was possibly Gill and Liz's turkey hat (they both wore it, at different times), but there were lots that made me giggle even more. (More photos here, although sadly not of any of the ones listed below...) Some highlights, hatwise:

• The antlers, with purple and silver streamers, worn by the leader of the orchestra when he came onstage on Sunday night. Well, not so much the antlers themselves as the look on his face... when everyone laughed, he looked serenely around as if to say "What?!?" It was even funnier when he bent his head down to tune his violin and the streamers covered the strings! And then in the middle of one of the pieces, it fell forward and Jamie had to remove it for him (while conducting) :-)

• The Santa hat worn by the leader of the 2nd violins. It moved from side to side! Jerkily! Not sure if it just does that randomly when switched on, or whether she was controlling it, but it fascinated us!

• The Santa hat with bells on the end, worn by one of the cellists. In the middle of one of the pieces, Sharon (the cellist who shares a desk with him) started poking the bell with her bow :-)

• Jamie's Santa hat. He didn't wear one on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Heather Stott (the presenter) brought one on for him to wear, but we were quite surprised that she did so right in the middle of a tricky bit of Jingle Bells. On Sunday night she brought it on during Sleigh Ride, which made more sense. But I just got an email from Sheena: "Heather told me she had agreed with Jamie that she would go on during the Sleigh Ride and give him the Santa hat to wear - Jamie had instructed her to come in when she heard the sleigh bells and people jangling their keys. However, there were also sleigh bells in Jingle Bells, and when Heather heard them she thought that was her cue and duly went on, unfortunately just when Jamie had a few particularly tricky bars to conduct. Jamie's remark from the podium was 'Is that for me? I'm a bit busy right now.'" Hee!

Something that's normally a hat highlight but wasn't this year - the horns! What's happened? (Gen, can you answer this?) The horns have usually been at the forefront of hat silliness, but none of them wore even a bit of tinsel this year. And they didn't play Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (in the wrong key) in the middle of Sleigh Ride as they usually do. The theory most people are going with is that they got told off for going too far (possibly as a result of the false breasts, a la Gazza, that they had last year...) and have decided to withdraw their Christmas spirit in protest. I hope this turns out not to be true and they're actually saving all their Christmasness for Friday :-)

Some other random things... no Jamieisms (well, except the one in the title, which is clearly the BEST ONE EVER), but a quote I liked from Dr Liz, after Jamie appeared to be enjoying himself far too much in the warmup: "We're just a toy now, aren't we?" I think it was only a minute later, and for the same reason, that Barbara said "He'd make a great Widow Twankey, wouldn't he?"

In the Sunday afternoon concert there was a kid (at least I PRESUME it was a kid) in the audience with a TAMBOURINE. There were also maracas and sleighbells in the same section of the audience, but it was the tambourine that was continually audible (in every piece, not just the audience participication ones!). I'm kind of surprised that someone would allow their kid to bring a tambourine to a classical concert, but I suppose that it's possible that either they didn't know the kid had it, or they hadn't been before and thought it'd be OK. But when they got there and realised that no-one ELSE was playing a tambourine, I'm very surprised the tambourine wasn't stopped and/or confiscated - if not by the parents then by the stewards! I personally found it incredibly distracting, so I don't know how Jamie put up with it.

Better news, though - that note in A Merry Christmas seems to be right! For the first time ever! Well, at least, it may not be correct throughout the alto section - I can't hear that many people, I'm on the back row - but all the people I can hear are certainly singing it correctly. It's kind of sad how pleased this makes me :-) (And in case you were wondering, the Youth Choir altos got that bit right again both times, AND the Youth Choir as a whole stayed in tune throughout both concerts. Yay!)

There *is* a bar in White Christmas that's bugging me, though. It's a bar where the tune goes F# G, yet the alto part goes Eb F. It's just a mess so far - some people are singing F# G, most have realised that they're supposed to be lower than that and are singing a mixture of D, Eb, E, F and F#, hardly anyone is singing Eb F... The mess continues on the next page, because the next note is an F (i.e. the same note we're supposed to have just sung) and it's quite an easy one to get, so it throws people when they realise they've gone wrong but they don't know where. (Overanalyse things? ME?!? OK, I'll stop now...) The *good* news about White Christmas is that the "up north" thing, which we all thought was a bad idea because it just wasn't funny, has actually gone down very well with the audience! Go figure :-)

I was in the group that sang in the foyer after Sunday night's concert, and Jamie was pleased that we actually got the words right (i.e. ringing/singing). Apparently the Saturday night group didn't. The Saturday night altos were blaming the sopranos, unsurprisingly!

And finally... we got a standing ovation for our descants! We sang three of them in the end (Once in Royal, While Shepherds Watched, and of course O Come All Ye Faithful). It was very exhilarating. Jamie didn't appear to notice we were singing... or, more likely, he was thinking "Oh my God! I can't believe they took me seriously! I'd better not look at them, it'll only encourage them!" But we did get a standing ovation :-) There may of course be those who claim that the standing ovation was NOT in fact for the alto descant. But the facts are clear: did the altos sing the descant at the first two concerts? No. Did we get a standing ovation at the first two concerts? No. Q.E.D. :-)